Georgia, the No. 2 cotton state, lost one-third of its crop to Hurricane Michael, said the USDA on Thursday in lowering its estimate of the total U.S. harvest by 7 percent because of storm damage in the Southeast. Georgia officials say cotton losses could be as high as $600 million.
Alabama, the No. 6 cotton grower, lost one-fifth of its crop, and production in Florida is down by 40 percent, said the USDA in its monthly Crop Production report.
“This was shaping up to be the best crop ever,” said Georgia state Rep. Clay Pirkle in a state Agriculture Department update of hurricane damage in late October. “My dad has been farming 50 [years]. He’s never seen anything like this, in terms of the devastation or the potential crop that we had.”
Hurricane Michael, one of the most powerful storms to ever reach the U.S. mainland, hit the Florida Panhandle on Oct. 10 and carried high winds and heavy rain into central Georgia. The cotton harvest was underway, so cotton bolls were “wide open and susceptible to the wind,” Ron Lee, a farmer, told the Insurance Journal. “Every row looked like snow on the ground,” said Andy Lucas of the Georgia Farm Bureau. At the end of October, 46 percent of the state’s cotton crop was rated in poor or very poor condition. Before the hurricane, 59 percent had been assessed as good or excellent.
The USDA estimated Georgia’s crop at 1.95 million bales, compared to its pre-hurricane estimate of 2.9 million bales, when record yields per acre were in reach. Alabama is forecast to pick 880,000 bales, compared to the pre-storm estimate of 1.12 million bales. Florida growers are expected to harvest 125,000 bales, down from the 220,000 bales forecast before Michael.
Texas, the biggest cotton-producing state, was forecast to grow 36 percent of this year’s U.S. crop of 18.4 million bales weighing 480 pounds each. Before Hurricane Michael, the U.S. crop was forecast for 19.8 million bales.